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They did. Just minutes after they arrived, the flames roared over them. They all survived. The supermarket was not so lucky; it burned to the ground.

Kinglake is now full of stories about the fateful hand of chance during Saturday's wild fire: the lucky escapes and the ghastly accidents. The one for whom everyone feels is the man who took his children to his parent's home for safety. He ended up losing them all.

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Senior Constable Wood had a moment of fear for his own family. He was on duty at the Kinglake police station and his wife and children were at home in St Andrews. She called and asked him to come home, saying: "I'm looking out the kitchen window and there are flames out the window."

"I couldn't go. I couldn't get down the mountain," he recalls. "Anyway, when you see flames it's too late to do a runner. That's what happened with a lot of the people here."

The road out of Kinglake is still littered with empty, twisted cars. Some have collided head on and others were in multi-car pile-ups. Senior Constable Wood knows why — he was on that road, answering a call for help, when the smoke of the fire front first hit. He turned to go back into Kinglake and found himself blind. "It went pitch black, darker than the darkest of nights. There were cars going everywhere. There was sheer panic," he said.

Now Kinglake is spent. The people are red-eyed, bedraggled and exhausted, but there is little chance for rest. They stood still, too tired to even mill about, at yesterday's community meeting at the CFA shed. They listened without protest as they were told the arrangements for everyday life until power is restored to the mountain: toilets and showers are being brought in, SES crews will ferry essentials such as medicines up and down from Whittlesea, donated food is coming and a mobile phone charging station has been set up.

Even for those who have not lost their homes, life is uncomfortable because if you don't have a generator, no power means no pumps, means no water.

"We can't even flush a toilet," says Jodie Jackson. Her husband Gary says: "And Ethan has lost his school."

But five-year-old Ethan is in his father's arms, his head nestled in his father's neck, and daughter Holly, nine, is clinging to her mother. So the Jacksons smile as they talk of their troubles. Jodie tells of exploding gas bottles and racing to hose out huge embers; they fought hard to save their street — she kept the kids busy wetting towels to distract them — and their street has come off lightly. The aftermath of fear is evident in the way they all hold each other close, stroking, reassuring. But Jodie says what they feel most is gratitude. "We survived. We've seen a lot of people who've lost everything."

Police would not release any figures yesterday on the number suspected dead in Kinglake although it was reported more than 20 had been found.

Locals fear the worst. One man said grimly, "plenty were trapped — see all those burnt out houses with the cars still there".

Those working to help are just as likely to be suffering themselves. Peter Cumming, CFA divisional commander for Kinglake, says 12 of his 120 crew have lost their own homes but are still working to quell the last of the flames. Many were also distressed by the loss of friends.

"Some know Brian Naylor and his family fairly well. I think their emotions are just on the edge at the moment," Mr Cumming said.

"At some stage they are going to crash, but for the moment they are keeping going."